1883

I'm watching a TV mini-series called 1883. It's a good show. It's about a group of settlers going West in a wagon train in (of course) the year 1883. There are ten episodes in season one, and thus far, six have been aired. I don't know if there will be a season two. That's why it's called a "mini-series." 

Watching the show, it brings to mind what my own family may have gone through, though they never went West. My father's family came from Florida and Alabama. Unfortunately, I can't trace them back further than the Civil War. Many courthouses in the South were burned during the Civil War, and records were lost. 

My mother's Virginia ancestry is more intact and I can reliably trace her roots to a man born in England in 1599. I can trace his roots even farther back, but the farther back I go, the less reliable the information becomes.

My mother, Alice, was born in 1916 in Sussex County, Virginia. My grandmother, Sarah, was born in 1890. Sarah's mother, Mariah, was born about 1855 and Sarah's father, John, was born about 1838. John would have been 45 years old in 1883, which, in my opinion, was a little bit old to make the trip west. It was a difficult trip and required very hardy folk. They had to cross a continent, the Great Plains, desert, mountains, and rivers, in horse-drawn covered wagons (not to be confused with the earlier Conestoga wagons pulled by bulls that were used to settle the eastern part of America). Many photos and drawings of the covered wagons are on Wikipedia here.

Imagine traveling for thousands of miles through wilderness in what was essentially a small farm wagon covered with canvas. If those settlers had known in advance of the hardships that they would have to endure, many of them may have reconsidered their trips west. They might have looked around and thought, "You know, this place where I am now isn't so bad." 

But many of the settlers going west had already crossed an ocean in a wooden boat with canvas sails to get here, and nothing was going to stop them from their goals. They were sturdy, determined folk. I think it likely that most of them were young. Young people haven't experienced so much of life's hardships. They still think anything is possible. Some of them were right. Their gamble paid off and they found a new and better life. Others lie buried along the thousands of miles of wagon trails. Though they lost their gamble, I respect them equally for trying. They were building a country in the most difficult circumstances, though most of them surely didn't think of it that way. For many living in the 19th century, hardship was normal, and moving West was just a different kind of hardship. If they continued living in the East, they knew what their future would hold. Traveling west was a gamble that a better future lay at the end of their long trek.

As I said earlier, 1883 is a good TV show. It shows us the hardships that settlers faced. I hope the outcome is as satisfying as the journey.